Never

[Anya de la Rose]

31 Years Ago

A four year old can count to three, and a four year old can dance. But doing both at the same time can be difficult for even the most graceful. The Duchess’s daughter was not the most graceful. She clung to her half-sister who was three years older and better at taking the lead.

“One, two, three. One, two, three,” the teacher called. He clapped his hands with the rhythm. The two girls waltzed slowly, carefully. Until the younger stumbled and stepped on the older’s toes. “Again!” he called.

“I don’t want to dance again. She steps on me every time,” the older sister whined. “She’s never going to be good enough to dance with anyone else.”

“I’m trying, Mariot,” Anya whispered. Her eyes welled with tears at the older girl’s criticism.

“Chin up and smile, Anya,” her mother chirped from her seat on the edge of the dance floor. “You have to smile.”

29 Years Ago

BANG Smoke billowed from the manor’s kitchen. The staff moved with less concern than would be expected from those confronted with a fire. They had buckets on hand outside the door and formed an orderly line to shuffle them in and extinguish the hearth. The mangled remains of a chicken emerged from the ashes. The only wood that hadn’t burned was that directly below the bird.

Six year old Anya stood ten feet from the hearth. Her face, hair and clothes were coated in soot. She blinked wide blue eyes at the destroyed chicken and then turned them on to the elf sitting at the table across the room. His look at her was darkened by ash and disappointment.

Behind her, she heard one of the kitchen staff lean to whisper to her neighbor in the bucket line. “She’s never going to be good enough to control that magic.”

25 Years Ago

The manor’s great hall and ballroom had been opened. Chandeliers running the length of each were lit and reflected in floor length mirrors set evenly along the walls to drive away the shadows. The Duchess and her ten year old daughter were at the top of the stairs, watching guests enter.

“Smile, Anya.”

“I don’t want to smile.”

“That doesn’t always matter.”

Voices drifted from down below. The guests were getting drunk. Some had arrived drunk and were crawling even farther into their cups. Anya’s stomach twisted painfully. Even at ten her dress was laced tightly enough that she couldn’t catch what little breath she was able to draw into her lungs around the knot in her throat. The people down there were talking about her. Making decisions about her life. And never asking her for a single opinion. That was how it would be forever if they found her good enough.

At the end of the night, they had judged her - harshly.

One year ago

For almost nine years, Anya had woken up every day, walked to the window and looked down on the courtyard for the sight of an unfamiliar horse, unexpected activity, or renewed life. Every morning she’d seen the same. She didn’t even notice the aging of the staff anymore, or the slow crumbling of the walls. She didn’t see the path that was getting worn in her room’s rugs, ancient and fragile to begin with and now showing clearly the marks of the same repetitive journey.

From the window she could see the town and beyond it the fields and scattered homes of the farmers farther out. The same people she’d seen growing up were now raising their own families in the houses they had been born in. The same people who had dodged her when she’d run through the manor’s halls as a child still stepped aside when she passed, but slower. As with every morning for the past nine years, Angnes the housekeeper cleared her throat behind Anya.

“No one has arrived, Lady.”

“No one is expected.” Anya turned away from the window to give the old woman the same tired look. They were in a routine. The housekeeper threw open the rest of the windows, letting in the fall air, and left. She was the very picture of efficiency. It seemed that today she had also had enough of the waiting. Anya heard the double doors shut behind Angnes and then her voice clearly through the gap as she spoke to the staff laying out breakfast in the Solar. Gossip in a house of this size was normal, but not always delivered in such a tone of disapproval.

“By now you’d think she would have managed to be good at something. Can’t keep a man, can’t keep a house, can’t keep the family line…” The woman’s voice faded out, replaced by the quiet giggles of the other two in the room.

“Never.” Anya whispered. She looked over her shoulder, out the window, and back to the door. She took a deep breath and closed the distance quickly to open them with a smile. “Angnes. I need a change of scenery. Please have a horse prepared that can last to RhyDin.”